Identity theft and other related fraudulent identification activity has the potential to become a major problem to the economy, safety and stability of the United States. Identity theft refers to one individual fraudulently assuming the identity of another and may include activities such as opening credit cards in the name of another, obtaining loans, obtaining identification documents (e.g., drivers licenses, passports), obtaining entitlement/benefits cards (e.g., Social Security Cards, welfare cards, etc.), and the like. Often, these activities are performed without the consent or knowledge of the victim. Other fraudulent identification activity can also be problematic. An individual may, for example, use either his or her “real” identity to obtain a document, such as an identification card, but may further obtain additional identification cards using one or more identification credentials that belong to another and/or one or more fictitious identification credentials.
For example, to obtain an identification document such as a drivers license, a given individual may attempt to obtain multiple drivers licenses under different identities, may attempt to obtain a drivers license using false (e.g., “made up”), identification information, or may attempt to assume the identity of another to obtain a drivers license in that individual's name. In addition, individuals may alter legitimate identification documents to contain fraudulent information and may create wholly false identification documents that purport to be genuine documents.
It is extremely time consuming and expensive to apprehend and prosecute those responsible for identity theft and identity fraud. Thus, to help reduce identity theft and identity fraud, it may be advisable for issuers of identity-bearing documents to take affirmative preventative steps at the time of issuance of the identity documents. Because of the large number of documents that are issued every day and the large history of already issued documents, however, it is difficult for individual employees of the issuers to conduct effective searches at the time such documents are issued (or re-issued). In addition, the complexity and amount of the information stored often precludes manual searching, at least as a starting point.
For example, many government and business organizations, such as motor vehicle registries, store large databases of information about individuals. A motor vehicle registry database record may include information such as an operator's name, address, birth date, height, weight, and the like. Some motor vehicle registry databases also include images of the operator, such as a facial image and/or a fingerprint image. Unless the database is fairly small, it is nearly impossible for it to be searched manually.
In some databases, part or all of the database record is digitally encoded, which helps to make it possible to perform automated searches on the database. The databases themselves, however, can still be so large that automated searching is time consuming and error prone. For example, some states do not delete “old” images taken of a given individual. Each database record might be associated with a plurality of images. Thus, a database that contains records for 10 million individuals, could, in fact, contain 50-100 million images. If a given motor vehicle registry uses both facial and fingerprint images, the total number of images may be doubled still.
One promising search technique that can be used to perform automated searching of information and which may help to reduce identity theft and identity fraud is the use of biometric authentication and/or identification systems. Biometrics is a science that refers to technologies that can be used to measure and analyze physiological characteristics, such as eye retinas and irises, facial patterns, hand geometry, and fingerprints. Some biometrics technologies involve measurement and analysis of behavioral characteristics, such as voice patterns, signatures, and typing patterns. Because biometrics, especially physiological-based technologies, measures qualities that an individual usually cannot change, it can be especially effective for authentication and identification purposes.
Commercial manufacturers, such as Identix Corp of Minnetonka, Minn. manufacture biometric recognition systems that can be adapted to be capable of comparing two images. For example, the IDENTIX FACE IT product may be used to compare two facial images to determine whether the two images belong to the same person. Other commercial products are available that can compare two fingerprint images and determine whether the two images belong to the same person. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,072,894, 6,111,517, 6,185,316, 5,224,173, 5,450,504, and 5,991,429 further describe various types of biometrics systems, including facial recognition systems and fingerprint recognition systems.
Some face recognition applications use a camera to capture one or more successive images of a subject, locate the subject's face in each image, and match the subject's face to a one or faces stored in a database of stored images. In some face recognition applications, the facial images in the database of stored images are stored as processed entities called templates. A template represents the preprocessing of an image (e.g., a facial image) to a predetermined machine readable format. Encoding the image as a template helps enable automated comparison between images. For example, in a given application, a video camera can capture the image of a given subject, perform processing necessary to convert the image to a template, then compare the template of the given subject to one or more stored templates in a database, to determine if the template of the subject can be matched to one or more stored templates.
Facial recognition has been deployed for applications such as surveillance and identity verification. In surveillance, for example, a given facial recognition system may be used to capture multiple images of a subject, create one or more templates based on these captured images, and compare the templates to a relatively limited “watch list” (e.g., set of stored templates), to determine if the subject's template matches any of the stored templates. In surveillance systems, outside human intervention may be needed at the time of enrolling the initial image for storage in the database, to evaluate each subject's image as it is captured and to assist the image capture process. Outside human intervention also may be needed during surveillance if a “match” is found between the template of a subject being screened and one or more of the stored templates.
For example, some driver license systems include a large number of single images of individuals collected by so called “capture stations.” When configured for face recognition applications, these identification systems build template databases by processing each of the individual images collect at a capture station to provide a face recognition template thereby creating a template for every individual. A typical driver license system can include millions of images. The face recognition template databases are used to detect individuals attempting to obtain multiple licenses. Another application provides law enforcement agencies with an investigative tool. The recognition database can discover other identities of a known criminal or may help identify an unidentified decedent.
One difficulty in adapting commercial biometric systems to databases such as motor vehicle databases is the very large number of images that may be stored in the database. Some types of biometrics technologies can produce high numbers of false positives (falsely identifying a match between a first image and one or more other images) when the database size is very large. High numbers of false positives are sometimes seen with large databases of facial images that are used with facial recognition systems.
Another potential problem with searching large databases of biometric images can be the processing delays that can accompany so-called “one to many” searches (comparing a probe image with an “unidentified” image, such as a face or finger image presented for authentication, to a large database of previously enrolled “known” images. In addition, the “many” part of “one-to-many” can vary depending on the application and/or the biometric being used. In some types of applications (such as surveillance, terrorist watch lists, authentication for admission to a facility), the “many” can be as few as a few hundred individuals, whereas for other applications (e.g., issuance of security documents, such as passports, drivers licenses, etc.), the “many” can be many millions of images.
Because many known facial recognition systems are used for surveillance applications, these facial recognition systems are optimized to work with surveillance conditions, including working with databases having relatively small numbers of templates of images (e.g., fewer than 1 million records). In addition, some facial recognition applications are able to processes multiple images captures of the same subject and, as noted previously may have an outside operator assist in initial capture of the images.
For some applications, however, the optimization of the facial recognition system may be less than ideal. For example, systems such as drivers license databases may contain far more images in their databases a given surveillance application. The databases of drivers license images maintained by the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) in some states range from a few million records to more than 80 million records. In some instances, the DMV databases grow larger every day, because at least some DMVs do not delete any customer images, even those of deceased license holders. Another possible complication with some DMV databases is that, during the license renewal cycle, duplicate images may be created of the same person. In some instances, it may be rare to see more than two images of the same person in a DMV database, however.
Still another complication with applying facial recognition processing to at least some DMV databases is the lack of operator intervention during image capture. It is time consuming, expensive, and often impossible to re-enroll the “legacy” database of DMV images so that the images are optimized for automated facial recognition.
To address at least some of these and other problems, we have developed systems and methods for performing automated biometric searching of databases of captured images, where the databases can be very large in size. These systems and methods can be used during the creation and maintenance of the database as well as during the search of the database. In one embodiment, we provide a browser based system with an operator friendly interface that enables the operator to search a database of captured images for matches to a given so-called “probe” image. When matches are detected, if the operator determines that fraud or other issues may exist, the operator can add an indicator to the image and/or the image file so that future investigators are aware that issues may exist with the image. In an application such as a DMV, the DMV can use the systems and methods of the invention to prevent the issuance of a driver's license if fraud is detected and/or to track down whether a driver's license already issued was issued based on fraudulent information and/or images.
At least some systems and methods of the embodiments of the invention described herein also may help to detect patterns of fraud, geographically locate entities (including individuals, organizations, terrorist groups, etc.) committing and/or attempting to commit fraud, and help to prevent fraud.
In one embodiment, the invention employs a facial recognition technique that is based on local feature analysis (LFA), such as is provided in the Identix FACE IT product.
In one embodiment, we provide a system for issuing identification documents to a plurality of individuals, comprising a first database, a first server, and a workstation. The first database stores a plurality of digitized images, each digitized image comprising a biometric image of an individual seeking an identification document. The first server is in operable communication with the first database and is programmed to send, at a predetermined time, one or more digitized images from the first database to a biometric recognition system, the biometric recognition system in operable communication with a second database, the second database containing biometric templates associated with individuals whose images have been previously captured, and to receive from the biometric recognition system, for each digitized image sent, an indicator, based on the biometric searching of the second database, as to whether the second database contains any images of individuals who may at least partially resemble the digitized image that was sent. The a workstation is in operable communication with the first server and is configured to permit a user to review the indicator and to make a determination as to whether the individual is authorized to be issued an identification document or to keep an identification document in the individual's possession.
The digitized image can, for example, be at least one of a facial, fingerprint, thumbprint, and iris image. The identification document can, for example, be a driver's license.
The biometric recognition system can be programmed to create a biometric template based on the digitized image received from the first server and to use that biometric template to search the second database. The first server can be programmed to create a biometric template and provide that template to the biometric recognition system.
The indicator can comprise a user interface the user interface retrieving from the third database the images of at least a portion of the images of individuals that the biometric recognition system has determined may at least partially resemble the digitized image that was sent. In at least one embodiment, the user interface is operable to permit a user to do at least one of the following functions:
visually compare the digitized image that was sent directly to an image of an individual whose data was returned in the indicator by the facial recognition search system;
visually compare demographic information associated with the individual whose digitized image was sent directly to demographic information of an individual whose data was returned in the indicator by the facial recognition search system;
visually compare the other biometric information associated with the digitized image that was sent to other biometric information associated with an individual whose data was returned in the indicator by the facial recognition search system;
create a new biometric template of the digitized image that was sent and conduct a new search of the biometric recognition search system using the new biometric template;
perform a re-alignment of the digitized image and use the re-alignment data to conduct a new search of the biometric recognition search system;
capture a new image of the individual whose digitized image was sent;
adding a notification to a record associated with at least one of the digitized image that was sent and the data that was returned in the indicator by the biometric recognition search system, the notification providing an alert that there may be a problem with the record; and
selecting at least one of the images of an individual whose data was returned in the indicator by the facial recognition search system and sending that image to the biometric recognition search system to run a search on that image.
In one embodiment, we provide a method for screening a plurality of applicants each seeking to be issued an identification document, comprising:
(a) storing a digitized image of each applicant in a first database;
(b) providing a predetermined portion of the images in the first database, at a predetermined time, to a biometric searching system, the biometric searching system comparing the digitized image of each applicant to a plurality of previously captured images of individuals stored in a third database and returning to a second database, for each applicant, an result containing a list of matches to each image, each match having a score;
(c) selecting from the second database those results having a score above a predetermined threshold and providing the results to a fourth database;
(d) providing the selected results to an investigator; and
(e) displaying to the investigator, upon request, information about each selected result.
The method can also include the steps of receiving a notification from the investigator relating to at least one of the results, and adding a notification to a record associated with the corresponding result, the notification remaining in the record until removed by an authorized individual and being visible to other investigators until removed.
In another embodiment we provide a computer implemented method of creating a biometric template of an individual for facial recognition processing, comprising:
sending an image of the individual to a plurality of eye finding modules, each eye finding module configured to find the location of at least one eye of the individual in the image;
receiving locations of the at least one eye from each respective eye finding module in the plurality of eye finding modules; and
applying at least one rule to the received locations to determine the eye location to be used for creation of the biometric template.
In one embodiment, the predetermined rule can comprise at least one or more of the following rules;
selecting as an eye location the average of the received eye locations;
selecting as an eye location a weighted average of the received eye locations;
selecting as an eye location the location that is closest to the eye location determined by a majority of the plurality of eye finding modules;
removing from the received eye locations any eye locations that are outside of a predetermined boundary;
selecting as an eye location an eye location that is the center of gravity of the received eye locations;
removing from the received eye locations any eye locations that do not fit known eye characteristics, and
removing from the received eye locations any eye locations that are not within a predetermined distance or slope from the eye locations of the other eye of the individual
In one embodiment, we provide a method of searching a database of biometric templates, each biometric template associated with a corresponding facial image of an individual, for an image of an individual who substantially resembles an individual in a probe image, comprising:
receiving a probe image of an individual at a client;
determining the eye locations of the individual;
applying a predetermined rule to determine if the eye locations are acceptable;
if the eye locations are acceptable, creating a probe biometric template using the eye locations; and
searching a database of biometric templates using the probe biometric template.
In another embodiment we provide a system for investigating an image of an individual, comprising:
a first database, the first database storing at least one digitized image, the digitized image comprising a biometric image of an individual seeking an identification document;
a second database, the second database storing a plurality of digitized images of individuals whose images have been previously captured;
means for determining whether any of the images in the second database match any of the images in the first database to a predetermined degree and for providing such matches an investigator, the means for determining being in operable communication with the first and second databases; and
means for allowing the investigator to compare information associated with the first digitized image with information associated with any of the matches, the means for allowing being in operable communication with at least a third database capable of providing the information associated with the first digitized image and information associated with any of the matches.
These and other embodiments of the invention are described below
The drawings are not necessarily to scale, emphasis instead is generally placed upon illustrating the principles of the invention. In addition, in the drawings, like reference numbers indicate like elements. Further, in the figures of this application, in some instances, a plurality of system elements or method steps may be shown as illustrative of a particular system element, and a single system element or method step may be shown as illustrative of a plurality of a particular systems elements or method steps. It should be understood that showing a plurality of a particular element or step is not intended to imply that a system or method implemented in accordance with the invention must comprise more than one of that element or step, nor is it intended by illustrating a single element or step that the invention is limited to embodiments having only a single one of that respective elements or steps. In addition, the total number of elements or steps shown for a particular system element or method is not intended to be limiting; those skilled in the art will recognize that the number of a particular system element or method steps can, in some instances, be selected to accommodate the particular user needs.